October 2015

What’s a KAL

stargrace October 27, 2015 No Comments

Sometimes even though I love knitting, I just don’t know what I want to make. I think about the yarn I have, the projects I have stored up, people in my life, and none of it wants to come together into a project. That’s where KAL projects can be a great filler. There are all sorts of them, for every type of knitter. “KAL” means “knit along” – and it’s typically a project you (gasp) knit along with others. This allows you to have discussions about the piece, get help, show off your progress and all the rest. Even though you’re all making the same project, using different types of yarn and having different sets of skills and tensions creates very different projects. I spent some time looking through the Ravelry groups and eventually settled on “Beginner’s Knit-Along” which is an active group with quite a few members. They have three types of knit along projects. Special KALs, Monthly KALs, and Mini KALs. The patterns are all free, and they keep the old ones up in the group so there’s no required ‘end date’ you can take as long as you want, you can begin the project when ever you want, and you can choose whichever project you’d like. I like this method quite a bit. It’s a great friendly place for beginners, and you’ll learn lots of skills. The first thing I decided to do was the mini KAL 2 for October, which is the lace headband that I’m wearing in the picture on this post (apologies for the quality, the bathroom mirror is not the prettiest place to take a picture). It was a very easy piece to knit up, it only took an evening. It fits well, stretches, and taught me that I’ve been doing my SSK stitches wrong. The mini KAL can be found here, it’s called February Lady Lace Headband. I’m trying to be a bit more social, knitting is a great activity and it’s nice to meet like-minded folks of all ages. I know previously knitting was seen as something only grandmothers did, but these days people of all ages are getting involved. Especially now that there has been some studies released about the benefits of knitting.

Some of the KAL projects seem a bit too advanced for me at this time – but I can’t wait to dive in. I WANT to keep challenging myself, I want to keep knitting bigger and ‘better’ projects, and getting more complex. I would also like to learn to read charts properly, for now I still go by text instructions, which is fine, but being able to read charts is also important. There’s a vote up for the project for November, it looks like the hat is winning out at this time, but that could change. In the meantime, I am still working on my cable scarf. I’ve finished the first skein and it’s a bit over two feet long, I’m aiming for a scarf 5 feet long (general rule of thumb is that scarves should be as long as the wearer is tall) as a Christmas gift. I should be able to get it done in plenty of time. It’s also time to cast on another pair of socks! This time I’m knitting them in a worsted weight yarn, so I need to re-make a gauge swatch so I know what size needles to use. I’m guessing I’ll need to get down to a size 1 or so to make gauge, but we’ll see.

Happy knitting!

A Completed Pair of Socks, and the Kitchener Stitch

stargrace October 20, 2015 No Comments

I was incredibly happy to finish my very first pair of socks. I went step by step using a class from Craftsy called “My First Socks” – and it went wonderfully. The socks are comfortable, fit perfectly, and I couldn’t be happier. Of course I hope to make a few more pairs, expand my knowledge of ‘sock stuff’ and we’ll see if I can manage making fancier ones over time, but for now, I’m really happy with my plain basic ones.

The only ‘difficult’ part I had with the sock was when it came to the toes. The course goes on to teach you a method of chimney grafting. It teaches you how stitches lock together, and basically you knit an extra bunch of stitches like a chimney at the end of the toe, then tuck that into the sock, then link the stitches of your sock together and then remove the chimney. My issues is that with my first sock I ended up not linking the stitches properly (really easy to do when you’re working with sock yarn) and I ended up dropping all sorts of stitches which freaked me out because it could have unraveled the entire toe.

For the second sock I decided to do things a bit differently. I learned that the chimney graft is actually just an adaptation to the Kitchener Stitch, but it involves sewing (stitching) instead of knitting. I watched a few videos on how to do this stitch, and voila, perfectly grafted toes that look beautiful, and no stress from any dropped stitches.  It was much less stress and I’m really glad to have found the stitch. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a comfortable sock before, great for those winter months.

Each sock took a bit less than 50g of yarn, and took approximately a week off and on of knitting to complete. It’s small enough that they’re portable for when you’re going out and about and want to bring your knitting with you (waiting for a doctor’s appointment as a good example). I did have a few issues with the type of yarn I used, it was uneven in some spots and there were three knots that I came across through the skein which really frustrated me, but for the price I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I believe I paid less than $10 total for both 50g balls, which isn’t a bad price for a nice pair of custom fit socks. Of course I’ll be making more.

I have three other sock courses from Craftsy, and I’m eager to see how those ones go. One issue I have with the classes is that I find the instructors take too long to get to the point and tend to flood the video with stories from their lives, which is great but I’m not trying to form a bond with the instructors I just want to know how to do xyz thing. That’s one of the reasons I really like the instructional videos on YouTube, I can go and find one and all it does is teach me what I want to know, thus making them MUCH shorter. The Craftsy classes can be hours long, and by the time I’ve made my way through an entire video my attention span has waned and I’ve moved on to a new project. I wish they had ‘optional’ classes that just taught you the technical aspects without all the story time. Still, they’re great teaching tools and they obviously work.

Now that my socks are completed I’ve moved on to a few other projects, the scarf that I wrote about yesterday, and a new winter hat that I’ve been working on that includes my first attempts at colour work. I think it has been turning out pretty well so far, but that’s a post for tomorrow! Happy knitting. <3